Read: The exquisite pain of reading in quarantineīefore accepting that I was no different from everyone else sublimating their ambition into a “quar project,” my reading habits had changed naturally with the phases of the pandemic. What I found was a novel so preoccupied with the minutiae of experience that I had no choice but to reappraise my own. His novel cycle, In Search of Lost Time, also presents the attractive challenge of surmounting a massive text-multiple volumes, stretching between 3,000 and 4,000 pages, depending on the edition-and the subsequent entry into a rare and rather pretentious club of readers. Proust’s work has many qualities that might recommend it for pandemic reading: the author’s concern with the protean nature of time, the transportive exploration of memory and the past, or simply the pleasure of immersing oneself in the richly detailed life of another. My friend’s response shortly thereafter confirmed this: “It’s too early for me to follow this sentence.” Next to me, my 2-year-old daughter slowly guided a spoonful of oatmeal into her mouth, noticing my struggle. It was a photo of a page from Swann’s Way, and it took several attempts for me to capture the near-page-length sentence in its entirety. The next time one of its readers walks past a little free library, they might just stop to look inside.One morning a few weeks ago, I sent my friend a Proust text. The Lost Library reminds us that each book contains an entire universe, and the next one you step inside of could be the one that changes everything. It is subtly magical, sweetly optimistic and above all, kind. Though readers might expect something on a slightly grander scale from the combined powers of Stead and Mass, The Lost Library’s whimsical simplicity is a delight. Throughout the novel, characters shine through their relationships with others, and the overarching lesson is clear: People need each other, and this is a good thing. The story is relatively small in scope but speaks to the wider importance of connection. Stead and Mass provide all the tools required to solve the book’s multilayered mysteries-but rather than make the reveals too obvious, they create an alluring trail of breadcrumbs, inviting readers to leap to each discovery by themselves. Written by two powerhouses of children’s literature, Rebecca Stead and Wendy Mass, The Lost Library is a charming love letter to libraries, stories and life’s little mysteries, told through the alternating perspectives of Mortimer the cat, Evan and ghostly librarian Al. But Martinville isn’t ready to give up such big secrets so quickly. Higgins live in Martinville? Did he set the fire? With the help of his best friend, Rafe, Evan investigates the expanding number of clues. Why did the old library burn down? Why didn’t they build a new one? Did H.G. Higgins appears to have been the last person to check some of them out.Īs the little free library grows, so does Evan’s list of questions. Not only that, but the famous mystery writer H.G. He also seems to be the only one to notice that most of the books are from the old Martinville library, where they were all returned on November 5, 1999-the same day the library burned down. But one day in the waning months of spring, a little free library appears overnight in front of the town’s History House, guarded by a large, purring, orange sentinel named Mortimer.įifth grader Evan is one of the first to discover the new library and take some books. Twenty years ago, it burned to the ground, and nothing was ever built in its place. There is no library in the small town of Martinville.
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